Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Divine councils and apocalyptic myth
- 2 Theoxeny
- 3 Romance
- 4 Odyssey 4
- 5 Odyssey 5
- 6 Odyssey 6–8, 10–12, 13.1–187; Genesis 28–33; Argonautic myth
- 7 Odysseus and Jonah
- 8 The combat myth
- 9 Catabasis, consultation, and the vision
- 10 Thrinakia and Exodus 32: Odysseus and Moses
- 11 The suitors and the depiction of impious men in wisdom literature
- 12 Odysseus and Jesus
- 13 Contained apocalypse
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- Subject index
7 - Odysseus and Jonah
Sea-monsters and the fantastic voyage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Divine councils and apocalyptic myth
- 2 Theoxeny
- 3 Romance
- 4 Odyssey 4
- 5 Odyssey 5
- 6 Odyssey 6–8, 10–12, 13.1–187; Genesis 28–33; Argonautic myth
- 7 Odysseus and Jonah
- 8 The combat myth
- 9 Catabasis, consultation, and the vision
- 10 Thrinakia and Exodus 32: Odysseus and Moses
- 11 The suitors and the depiction of impious men in wisdom literature
- 12 Odysseus and Jesus
- 13 Contained apocalypse
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- Subject index
Summary
At the core of the Odyssey, especially in the popular imagination, is what we might call the fantastic voyage, the incredible adventures at sea. Though most of the epic does not actually involve such phenomena, the few instances of the fantastic voyage and its attendant monsters have intriguing ties with other ancient myths. When, in Book 5, Odysseus sees Scheria's jagged, rocky coast after swimming for two days, his raft destroyed by Poseidon, he is afraid to turn back to the open sea for two reasons:
I fear lest a great gust having snatched me away again
would bear me, groaning deeply, back to the sea, teeming with fish,
or lest a god would send a great monster (kêtos) against me
from the sea.
Odyssey 5.419–22If only in passing, the Odyssey here briefly points to a mythic type that involves a lone protagonist, separated from his crew, threatened by a fantastic sea-monster. The same genre of myth is extant in the Book of Jonah, a few other episodes in the Odyssey, and a brief passage in the Iliad. The Egyptian tale, The Shipwrecked Sailor, also offers partial parallels. Since the great fish in Jonah combines what are in the Odyssey the separate functions of the sea-monster and Poseidon, we also reconsider elements of Odysseus' interactions with Poseidon under this rubric.
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- Information
- Homer's Odyssey and the Near East , pp. 164 - 179Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011